We are delighted to report that the book Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon edited by Parsons’ School of Design Strategies Faculty Eduardo Staszowski & DESIS Lab Visiting Scholar Virginia Tassinari, designed by Parsons’ School of Art, Media, and Technology Faculty Andrew LeClair has been awarded a Compasso D’Oro by the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI). Originated in Italy in 1954, the Compasso D’Oro is the highest honor in Italian design. Awarded only every two years, the book won in the section for theoretical, historical, critical research and editorial projects in design.
From ADI
“This book is the first in a series that aims to define design and its potential in response to current systematic, social, economic, political and environmental challenges, opening up new possibilities for contemporary design, and rethinking its political responsibility among other things. It questions the meaning of the kind of thinking that develops through design and the words used to conceive design practice today. Starting from the reflections of the philosopher Hannah Arendt on the potential of human thought and action to react in times of crisis, it provides designers and design theorists with 56 Key words (including citizenship, common good, action, democracy, humanity, public violence and totalitarianism).”
About the Book
Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt’s major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms—from Action to Violence—and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up a range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt’s thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis. With additional contributions by Arendt herself, Richard J. Bernstein, Kenneth Frampton and Martha Rosler, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times.